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Show Greek Seminar Spotlights New Testament By SANDRA TELFORD Chronicle Staff Writer Wednesday night the Union Spotlight Spot-light Committee presented its' second sec-ond of four lectures in the Seminar Semi-nar program on Greece. " Father Isaiah Chronopolous, assistant pastor pas-tor at the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Or-thodox Church,, discussed the aspects as-pects in the development of Eastern Eas-tern Orthodox Christianity. FATHER ISAIAH explained that the reason why the Greeks were among the first to adopt the teaching teach-ing of Christ Was because they were dissatisfied with their gods; gods that had human weaknesses and human passions- Therefore the Greeks turned readily to Christianity. Chris-tianity. !";'..'" He then went on to say that the Greeks point with pride to the fact that the original New Testament was written in Greek, and that the majority of Epistles Were also written writ-ten to them. The Greeks consider themselves the o-n 1 y Orthodox Christians. FATHER ISAIAH told how the early church grew and prospered in the East, and how when the West had her Dark Ages, there was no Dark Ages in the East. This was the time when the Greek Orthodox Church split with the Roman Catholic Church and founded .he "Rome' 'in Constantine and continued con-tinued to prosper. Then, Father Isaiah, explained the heierarchy of the Greek Orthodox:1 Or-thodox:1 Church saying that there are thirteen independent churches and six semi-independent churches within the scope of the Greek Orthodox Or-thodox Religion. There are five million people who believe in the Greek Orthodox Religion in the United States. Father Isaiah explained ex-plained that this is not a missionary mission-ary religion but that it followed its people to the countries they immigrated immi-grated to. Two of the independent churches are the Russian Orthodox, Ortho-dox, and the Greek Orthodox, while some of the semi-independent are the Hungarian Orthodox and the Finnish Orthodox. These semi-independent- churches will become independent when they have e-nough e-nough members in the church. Being Be-ing an independent church does not mean that they have different beliefs be-liefs from the mother church (the Greek Orthodox Church) but that they are the Russian branch of the Greek Orthodox Church. SOME OF their main beliefs are: monasticism, belief in the Trinity, holy Mass as the bloodless sacrifice sacri-fice of Calavry, belief in seven sacraments of which confession is optional. Mary as ever virgin, and original sin. They do have a priesthood, priest-hood, but the priests are allowed to be married. In concluding, Father Isaiah quoted quot-ed Prof- N. A. Hodges: "The Orthodox Ortho-dox Christianity presents us the Faith and life of the individual church . . . Apostolic Faith ... ; uneffected by Papal and Protestant innovations." , j |